Since the group liked the game well enough last week, we decided to start play with a game of The Princes of Machu Picchu once more. Nick and Joanne sat this one out, handling the bank duties and all for the game, while Ellie got to play, as Tom hadn't been as enthralled as the rest of the group last time around, so I got to play. This time around, I had a much better game than the one I played in last Sunday afternoon. For that matter, Kathy improved as well on her performance from last Friday night, too. The beauty was that we actually prevented the Spanish victory, and so one the game overall. Ellie played a really good game, and would have easily won the Spanish victory conditions as a player, but we beat the Spanish victory by a whole two days!!, winning on Day 7 of the game. Lovely stuff. The final score for the game is represented by the Victory Points column, below, but the Final Score column reflects who would have won the game if the Spanish had claimed the victory.
Victory Gold Multiplier Final Points Score ------------------------------------------------------- JohnK 13 22 2 26 ------------------------------------------------------- SteveB 11 16 1 11 ------------------------------------------------------- Kathy 7 10 1 7 ------------------------------------------------------- Tom 12 19 1 12 ------------------------------------------------------- Ellie 16 23 3 48 --------------------,-----------------------------------
Personally, my own game was played much better, much smarter. And it showed in the scores. Still, my goddaughter, Ellie, won the game regardless, so all was well.
After Ellie crashed out for the night (she tried to bamboozle us all into a second game of Machu Picchu, but failed), we switched games to a five-player game of Ticket To Ride. I sat this one out, handling the card dealing and the like, and let the other five players play. It was a much more competitive game than I am used to with the Friday nighters, but a lot of fun to watch. The New York corridor was a hot zone of blocking and double-blocking, and in the end it weighed heavily on a couple of the players, as Kathy couldn't finish the Los Angeles-New York route, and Nick couldn't finish the Seattle-New York route. Final score was Kathy 69, SteveB 115, Nick 82, Tom 112, and Joanne 99.
We played another game of the original Ticket To Ride, and this time I was able to get into the game. Joanne sat this one out, as she was quite depressed over the loss in the previous game (despite Kathy and Nick scoring less than she did). She decided to watch my game and see how I played. I drew several routes to Phoenix, and completed them relatively easily and then managed to hook them up with a route from Vancouver-Sante Fe. I combined that with a route from Winnipeg to Houston by way of New York ::evil g::, and didn't have a single long ticket. I finished with 9 tickets for the game, and watched the others fight it out at Chicago, Kansas, and trying to get into my Phoenix. Final score this time out was: JohnK 148, SteveB 92, Kathy 100. Nick 39 (!!), and Tom 85. Overall, I was pleased with my performance in this one. I shouldn't have let that win go to my head, though...
After that game, we switched over to Ticket To Ride: Europe. This one tends to be one that I don't have a lot of luck with at times. Tonight was one of those times. SteveB sat this one out, and took care of the card handling. My woes started in Amsterdam, moved south to Marseille, and travelled over to Smolensk. The rest of the folks had a pretty good game of it, Kathy finally getting a bit of luck and connecting Stockholm to Moskva, across to Berlin, and down to Palermo. Brilliant game she played and track laying. The others did a good job of it, too, and my score reflected how badly I got beaten this game. The final score in the game was JohnK 52, Kathy 161, Nick 106, Tom 124, and Joanne 101. Ah, well...Like I said, I always seem to have problems playing TTR: Europe one for some reason. Perhaps next time around, I will have to get them to play TTR: Marklin or some such...
In any event, we had a pretty good night of gaming, and broke up around 12:25 am. I crawled into bed and read a book, my re-read of Chris Roberson's Paragea, for about half an hour, and then crashed. Woke up a couple of times during the night, but that was for a drink of water and for something else that I can't remember. Felt rested when I got up, so not all that bad a night's sleep.